Update: In today’s digital age, a stand out resume is imperative but before you decide to get all tech savvy, take a look at a few posts MarketPro has added here. We gathered some information to make sure you have valuable content in your resume and to stop you before like some marketers, you throw money away on a professionally-written resume.

The resume is one of a marketer’s most important career tools. For most professionals, it serves as a simple way to explain experience and qualifications. But for marketers, the resume works double duty as the first opportunity for you to show off your proficiency to potential employers by marketing yourself.

Update: Craft the Perfect Marketing Resume in 9 Blog Posts

If the resume is one of the first ways we market ourselves then why is it a common practice for most professionals to have invaluable content on their resume?- a bunch of bullet points with no impact. As lifelong learners, marketers have to learn and adapt to constant changes and new developments each year. Therefore our resumes are updated more times than other professionals. With the emergence of the new year the time has come to update your resume from last year and flex those new gained skills you’ve acquired. Show employers your proficiency with a stand out resume. Here are the 9 best blog posts to help you effectively market yourself to employers and clients.

Just as you might innovate surprising and remarkable ways to market a client’s product or an employer’s brand, it’s important to be able to get creative with how you present yourself. A well-designed traditional resume will get you a long way. But sometimes your situation or professional goals call for something more ambitious. If that’s the case, perhaps you can get some inspiration from these marketers who took an alternative approach to stand out:

16-Bit Journey

One graphic design and web development professional with an advertising background blew me away with this interactive resume adventure. Robby Leonardi created a website that walks users through his experience and expertise while emulating a retro Mario-style video game.

It’s one thing to tell hiring managers and digital marketing recruiters you’re proficient with web design and development with a line of text on a resume. It’s quite another to show them firsthand with a relevant, engaging experience. One thing in particular I like about Robby’s approach is that he doesn’t rely solely on the flashy gimmick; at the end of the adventure, you can find all the more traditional things an employer might want to see: PDF resume, website, contact information, etc.

Block Party

In 2014, recent Northwestern graduate Leah Bowman had her eyes on a spot in one of several “dream advertising agencies.” Her strategy to keep her resume out of the trash? Design a resume in the form of a Lego set, naturally.

Leah took advantage of Lego’s Digital Designer service, that allowed you to design and customize your very own set of bricks, then assembled her own kits according to what her model required. That’s the kind of effort that’s hard to ignore. And it had the added benefit of putting her creativity front-and-center to digital marketing recruiters and others who received a set. Another great thing to notice is that Leah wasn’t necessarily graphic design or web development guru–she wanted to pursue a career in account service. But she was able to innovate a way to translate her creativity and passion even without the technical mastery many of these other examples require. That should serve as an example for anyone who wants to create a stand-out resume but isn’t necessarily in a creative or tech-heavy discipline.

The extra work paid off. Leah secured an internship at Energy BBDO, a prestigious agency in Chicago. She now works there as a Global Account Executive.

Rolling the Die

Jenny Johns, a graphic design artist for Minneapolis brand agency, built a board game from scratch to promote her own personal brand.

Gamification has been a hot trend in marketing lately, with many brands realizing they can real in audiences and create sustained engagement by creating content that doubles as a competition or game. Jenny applied the same principal to her board game, which features custom-made tokens, a game board, and complete rule set.

Choose-Your-Own PR Adventure

Graeme Anthony did something to wow any public relations recruiter: he designed and starred in an interactive series of YouTube videos. I could explain further, but it simply wouldn’t do the piece justice.

Good news: it worked. The videos are a few years old now, but Graeme opted to leave them up. As he says in the initial video’s description: “Please note that I am now permanently employed but this CVIV video has been made public in the hope that it inspires others to demonstrate their natural creativity and secure work.”

Things to Keep In Mind

We love these ideas, and think they have the potential to be effective for growing marketing careers in almost any field. But before you commit a huge amount of time and effort (not to mention money) into a creative idea, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

Don’t forget the classic resume: Innovate and experiment all you want. But whatever you do, you should always have a well-assembled and up-to-date traditional resume document available in Word. When you head in to an interview, you won’t be able to print out your Lego set or cereal box and put it in a folder. You’ll want to have something that employers can easily input into their applicant tracking system to efficiently push you through their marketing recruitment and hiring process.

Remember your audience: Some people will be delighted by an unconventional resume that demonstrates exceptional hard work and passion–but others won’t be quite so impressed. Remember too that the first people to see your resume often won’t be marketers; but HR gatekeepers who might not appreciate the nuance and effort you put into an alternative idea. Consider what formats and content will appeal to different kinds of hiring managers and businesses, and customize accordingly.

Be different: You’ve probably looked at some of these examples and thought “That’s awesome, I should do something like that!” It’s good to be inspired by the creativity of others. But resist the urge to duplicate their ideas. These examples are outstanding; and as such, they’ve gotten a lot of attention online. Experienced marketing recruiters, HR professionals and hiring managers will likely have seen them or similar ideas before. They’ll know if you’re being a copycat. Make sure any unconventional strategies you try are unique and couldn’t be mistaken for a ripoff.

Update: 5 Reasons Not to Throw Money Away on a Professionally-Written Marketing Resume

We love these amazing creative ideas to present yourself to employers. Its encouraged that you do the same depending on the industry and craft your resume on your own. Few things are a bigger waste of resources to job-searching marketers than a resume purchased from a professional writer. In the professional resume writing world, there’s no shortage of individuals and agencies lining up and promising job hunters all kinds of results. They offer to create a comprehensive resume of your experience and qualifications, presumably to top professional standards in a way that impresses potential interviewers. But for marketers in particular, a paid-for resume isn’t just unnecessary; it can actually be detrimental to your job hunt. Click here for 5 reasons to shade a professionally-written resume.